


The Onslaught of Winter

by lilithtorch2



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: AU where SHIELD was created after the events of the Nolan Batman films, F/M, Gen, Major Character Death or Major Character "Death", Major liberties with timelines, slow update, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-12 07:47:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilithtorch2/pseuds/lilithtorch2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the 12th anniversary of his friend Bucky Barnes's death, Steve Rogers, business consultant to Stark Industries and secret S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, encounters a woman, the ballerina Natasha Petrovitch (Romanoff), who has an unexpected connection with him.</p><p>[A/N: Going to try to get it in by 4.4.2014 but I make no guarantees...]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First thing I thought of with "Winter is coming" = Selina Kyle's monologue, "There's a storm coming Bruce Wayne." Wanted to include the full monologue as it might work for Captain America in the ending/cliffhanger to this fanfic somehow and the best way was to put everyone and their superpowers into the Nolan-verse. Also doubles as my first transition into a SteveNat (my #2 OTP after BuckyNat) fanfic!

Steve Rogers, publicly known as the business consultant at Stark Industries, and Sam Wilson, whose day job was a Director at the Department of Veterans Affairs, gathered in front of Bucky Barnes’s grave. Steve put a bouquet of flowers beside the headstone. It was the twelfth anniversary of his brother’s death since their battle against the criminal mastermind Johann Schmidt. They, Sam, and a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents known as the Howling Commandos had been tasked with taking him down on a mission but Bucky had died trying to protect everyone. For Steve, the wounds were still fresh even though it had been twelve years. The loss of a brother proved to be something that did not simply vanish after three. He wished he could go back in time and change everything. He should have reached further for Bucky’s arm, should have prevented Bucky from going aboard the train with him…but it was too late. So many years too late.

“He was a good man who died too soon,” Steve sighed. The guilt had never left him. Not completely.

“Bucky would have wanted you to move on,” Sam told him bluntly. “You’ve grieved long enough, Steve. It’s time to live your life.”

“Maybe it _is_ time to let go.” However, Steve remained where he stood and thought about the what-could-have-been's.

“Come on, man." His brother nudged him away from the grave and back toward the outside world. “Let’s go get a drink.”

They went down to the local bar and ordered some beer. They ordered an extra one for Bucky.

“To Bucky,” Sam said.

“To Bucky," Steve repeated.

As they were swapping stories about Bucky’s great love of women, Steve noticed a redhead sitting by herself at a table nearby. She was dressed in a demure dark green dress that served to highlight the brightness of her hair. Bucky would have liked her, Steve told Sam, who agreed. Their brother had always had a thing for redheads growing up; wasn’t one of his first girlfriends one as well? Steve refocused his attention back to the woman sitting by herself, though, and…

How odd.

It seemed to Steve like she was grieving. That couldn't be right; he had to be misinterpreting things. She could have had a bad day at work for all he knew. Bucky was always the one who could read women; he had to be wrong. His internal monologue was interrupted by Sam, who gave him a lopsided grin.

"Look," he said, "I can tell you like her."

"So?"

"So why don't you go ahead and talk to her?"

Steve was about to when he and Sam saw a guy staggering toward the redhead. He almost berated himself for hesitating and thought the redhead was going to go home with the other guy instead when, upon more careful examination, he saw that she did not want any attention at all. The drunk was making advances toward her; she was closing herself off emotionally and wanted to be left alone.

Steve wasn't going to sit this one down; he hated bullying and harassment of any kind, even if it came from someone who was drunk. Steve nodded at Sam and walked up to the table. He announced loudly, “Whoever you are, hands off of her.”

“Yeah? And who might you be?” The guy towered over Steve, aching for a fight. He tried to shove Steve, but Steve only held his ground.

“I’m her boyfriend,” Steve answered aggressively. If that didn’t get the guy to back off, Steve didn’t know what would. He didn’t want to have it known that there was more to him than meets the eye.

The guy looked at the redhead, who only nodded and muttered that Steve was indeed her boyfriend, and glared at the man. Even though he was drunk, he still had enough sense left in him to know when to back off, so he retreated and slung a mild insult at Steve before he left the bar.

“Thank you,” the redhead told Steve. She motioned for him to sit with her at the table. Steve turned back to look at Sam, who smiled at him and gestured to show that he would be leaving the bar.

Steve nodded, and turned back to the redhead. “I’m Steve.”

“Natasha." The waiter walked up to their table to give her a bottle of their strongest vodka. She poured some of its contents into a glass and chugged down the glass. Vodka wasn’t the kind of drink people who frequented this particular bar would order; at least, not on the first go. Maybe his first impression of her had been right; perhaps she was grieving.

“Why the vodka?”

The redhead looked a little pained before she finally mustered, “I’m remembering someone. A…a friend. It would have been his birthday today.”

He quickly mentioned that he was remembering someone too before he steered the conversation toward a happier subject. He asked about Natasha’s background. She was a professional ballerina with the New York City Ballet. She was born in Russia, but had moved to the United States just four years ago to further her dancing career.

Steve told her that her English was practically flawless; he could barely detect any traces of an accent. She only said that she had a very good teacher.

“What’s your story, Steve?”

He explained that he’d lived at New York all of his life. Back in the day, he and Tony (“ _the_ Tony Stark?” Natasha asked him, impressed, but he only responded that Tony could be a bit obnoxious without meaning to) had founded the startup company now known as Stark Industries. He opted to leave early on because he couldn’t handle the kind of life and the kind of fame that came with being a co-founder and remained as business consultant instead. She didn’t ask him about the money, so he didn’t tell her. What Steve also didn’t tell Natasha, though, was that after the catastrophic Joker and Bane catastrophes in Gotham City, Commissioner Nick Fury decided to, off-the-book, recruit a group of smart and capable people into the covert organization called S.H.I.E.L.D. that would help deal “with the crazies” (Fury’s words, not his) that came their way. Steve, Sam, and Bucky were among the first recruits; Tony had been deemed too narcissistic to join so he would be a ‘consultant’ (again, Fury’s words, not his) instead.

Steve went further back into his life story. He, Sam, and Bucky (the dead brother he had been toasting) were childhood friends; they practically grew up together. The most traveling they had done as a trio was to go on a road trip all the way from New York to Vegas. (He did not mention anything they’d done as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.) Beyond that, they were the three stooges, always getting themselves into trouble, but not the kind of public trouble that Tony Stark had been known to get himself into until a certain Pepper Potts, and his current-wife, entered the picture.

“What happened to your brother?”

Steve only said that Bucky had died saving him. Natasha didn’t need to know about his other life this soon; they’d only just met.

“This brother of yours was a good man." Natasha took another swig of vodka and there was something about the way she did it that seemed so familiar. Where had he seen that before?

But he ignored that because sitting in front of him was a sexy woman, after all. Steve had to agree with Sam; if Bucky were here, he would have pushed Steve to talk to the redhead if not chase after her himself. He tried not to stare at the woman’s buxom chest and started talking to her about other, far lighter topics that did not involve death. They seemed to get along well with each other and she started to open up to him after awhile. He asked about her blue necklace, mentioning that it was pretty on her, but at this, her face became grim for a millisecond before she explained that she had bought it during her time in Russia. Their conversation resumed its bright, airy tone and before Steve knew it, hours had flown by. He offered to walk Natasha home; it wasn’t too far from where he and Sam had lived.

After they arrived at her apartment, Natasha smiled and thanked Steve for making her day better. She left him her number so he could call her if he ever wanted to see one of her performances.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I definitely wrote this while I was hungry. The burger joint is based off of the one in Le Parker Meridien at NYC...but without the crowds of people.

He called Natasha.

Well, no, before that he played it cool like Bucky might have done, pretended like he wasn’t thinking about Natasha that much (he really was, though) and had a busy life (he did have one!). He didn’t want to seem desperate.

Then he waited a few more days and Sam had to hit him upside the head for stagnating. And it was true; he was hesitating.

 _Then_ Steve finally called Natasha Petrovitch, dialing the numbers on his personal phone as if it were a death sentence. He heard a woman’s voice on the other end say something unintelligible.

“Natasha?”

Clear English now. “Who is this?”

“It’s me, Steve.” He held his breath.

And then she laughed; it was the sound of church bells on a Sunday morning. She said that she used Russian for unfamiliar numbers in case an annoying telemarketer or random stalker had gotten a hold of her phone number. You could never be too careful.

“You’ll have to teach me Russian sometime,” he said honestly, and Natasha laughed again before berating him for not calling her sooner. She genuinely thought he’d forgotten about her by then.

“Me? I never forget a pretty face,” Steve responded, borrowing a line from the deceased Bucky. Steve asked the ballerina if she was free to go out with him for lunch the next day; she said she was busy, but gave him her schedule and told him to pick a day.

“So where would you like to take me?” It was an innocent enough question, but Natasha had made no effort to conceal the passion sizzling inside her fiery spirit. It burned itself into Steve’s fragile heart, causing the breaths inside his lungs to shorten before he could blurt out a remotely coherent reply.

Of all the options that had been bouncing around inside his mind – some were fancy, others were too sketchy – he ended up with a burger place.

It was a secret little hole-in-the-wall that was hidden inside a fancy five-star hotel and well well-known among the locals for its burgers, sweet potato fries and music. Surprisingly, even though it had been in operation for at least fifteen years by now, not many tourists knew about the place. He figured it was a risk; the joint was only a simple burger place after all and he wasn’t sure what kind of food Natasha would enjoy. But it was a representation of who he had been growing up; when Steve was younger, he often visited the joint after school to take a break from the stresses of the day and draw whatever ideas he had.

As he waited outside the hotel, searching through the streets for Natasha, Steve immediately recalled the McDonald’s curse and almost regretted suggesting to Natasha that they meet here. In high school, a girl had taken him there for what would end up as a disastrous first date. Since then, every single time he, Sam or Bucky stepped foot inside the restaurant, something awful was sure to happen: failing grades, a break up, power outage, etc. At the time, Sam had wondered aloud if this also meant the end of any trips to all of the burger joints, regardless of quality.

He shook his head. He couldn’t afford to think he was jinxing the date before it even began.

Steve checked his watch every five seconds. Natasha had texted him to warn him that she’d be running late, and the questions crowded his mind. What would she look like? What would she wear? Would he know what to say to her? Why was she late? Normally, Steve would have texted Bucky in a panic for some last-minute advice, but he wasn’t around anymore. He went with the next best thing: his and Tony’s college friend, Sharon Carter, an ex-S.H.I.E.L.D. operative who currently worked as the go-to event planner for billionaires like Tony Stark. For Steve, though, she offered an honest glimpse into the female perspective unburdened by Bucky or Tony’s dating advice. Sharon only assured Steve again (and again… and again) that Natasha would definitely like him; he was a true gentleman who didn’t need to use lame pickup lines like Bucky or Tony needed to do, but if Natasha really wasn’t interested in him? That was her loss.

“So stop texting me! I’m planning Stark’s charity ball with Pepper right now!”

Steve looked up from his phone and saw the bright red hair weaving its way through the crowd toward him. He thought Natasha looked beautiful in her sunglasses and graceful dark floral print dress hidden underneath a red jacket as she waved hi and as she moved closer for a quick hug, he could smell the strawberry and lavender scent of her perfume.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“That’s fine. Ready?”

“Lead the way.” Smiling, she held out her hand; he took it. He led her past the well-dressed bellhop who looked at him with envy, walked through the fancy corridors with the shiny chandeliers, and ignored the glances of the occasional hotel resident who recognized him or Natasha. They crossed a long empty corridor of the hotel and soon found themselves standing in front of a slightly worn blue curtain. They could hear the hum of acoustic guitars and soft drums behind it.

“Do you trust me?” Steve asked Natasha dramatically.

Sure, he was subtly referencing the Aladdin movie, so it might have been a little too cheesy, but Natasha didn’t seem to mind. “Of course I do...Yes."

He took her through the magic blue curtain and she smiled at what she saw inside. The burger joint was a cozy, dimly lit room where musicians were playing on one corner, some tables were at the center, and the booths were set up along the wall. There were classic music and movie posters taped all over the walls as well as writing like “Peter and Gwen were here.” He ordered cheeseburgers and sweet potato fries for them.

Natasha was in awe that such a place could exist right here in the hotel; she’d been at the hotel before but never at this burger joint. Steve needn’t have worried about what to say; this was only the second time they had met, but the conversation flowed. What’s more, they talked about everything from politics to entertainment to New York traffic. Natasha enjoyed skiing and surfing because she liked the rush of adrenaline; he enjoyed being outside in the park or in a museum, searching for inspiration. They launched into a heated debate about classic films, but didn’t mind any pauses in the conversation, and only sat back and enjoyed the music. Steve was enraptured by the way her emerald eyes darted about before returning back to stare deeply into his. She gently brushed over his hand whenever she wanted to direct his attention back to her and leaned closer to him to whisper sweet nothings. Even with all of that going for her, she could devour a cheeseburger like she was defeating it in combat. Natasha closed her eyes in pleasure to savor her victory.

“Yum!”

“Glad you like it.”

“Like it? I love it!” Natasha took another huge bite of the burger.

“Promise not to tell anyone else about it?”

She grinned and crossed her heart. “I swear on my life.”

He laughed at that. When they left the hotel hours later, Natasha gave him an affectionate peck on the cheek that told him everything he wanted to know: she wanted to see him again. Before she got into the taxicab she hailed, Natasha looked back at him and smiled.

Steve had been worried for nothing; the burger joints (except McDonald’s) were totally curse-free.


End file.
